Low frequency response of methanol/acetone mixtures: Optical Kerr effect and molecular dynamics simulations

The low frequency spectra of methanol/acetone mixtures were obtained from the Fourier transform of the time resolved optical Kerr effect (OKE) signal. In order to further investigate the effect of the mole fraction of acetone on the low frequency response, we have performed molecular dynamics simulations and calculated the OKE response from the anisotropic polarizability correlation function. We analyze the low frequency response by decomposing it into molecular, induced and cross term. We suggest that the hydrogen bonding (HB) manifests itself at higher frequencies, which is mainly visible in the induced contribution to the low frequency response of methanol. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.